


Borderline

by vintageAerith



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Explicit Language, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Indecision, in which Karkat is his own worst enemy, which is always
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 02:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vintageAerith/pseuds/vintageAerith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you're always the one to crack first. But it's t-minus 72 hours until you reach the new session, and you think you've hit your limit. Better late than never.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Borderline

**Author's Note:**

> I am so new to Homestuck fic and so out of practice fic-writing in general that I am just praying this is not a total disaster. I hope you guys enjoy! To be continued soon, hopefully! Thanks to AO3 user Vikki for beta'ing this for me~

* * *

 

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you're about six nanosweeps from going off the fucking edge.

You aren't sure where you envisioned yourself being at 7.5 sweeps old. Hopefully alive. Hopefully still blessedly too young for the imperial hive rounds. Hopefully had by then trained your lusus to stop trying to rip off the goddamn cooling block door when you accidentally overslept. Which was always. Because when did you ever fucking sleep? Sleep was something you only did when your body literally gave out from under you, traitorous fuck that it was, because as long as you were conscious and aware, you had a snowball's chance in the incinerator at fending off whoever came to cull you, whenever that day arrived. Sleep was fitful, restless, as short as possible. Sleep was to keep you going. To keep you surviving, even if it took a toll on living.

When the fuck did you become an introspect, anyway?

You are 7.5 sweeps old, Rose and Dave's equivalent of 16 earth years, and it's a good thing you're about to land in the rebooted Land of Pink Skin and Nachos because one more dream bubble, one more appearified meal of freeze-dried ice cream and cluckbeast nuggets, one more second on this floating rock is going to--

You stopped trying to be helpful a while ago. You gave up the role of leader when the orange-clad talky human set foot on the roof, still dripping with bits of green hydrogen. It rapidly became apparent that she and Kanaya would take care of the hyperanalysis of the game constructs, Dave would do whatever the fuck he was doing when not building shitty can skyscrapers with the funny little Dersite who was still mostly a mystery to you all, and you? You were pretty much left to keep tabs on your moirail like a woofbeast owner.

You figured out Gamzee had gone god tier about two days into the trip. And three days in, he decided that he'd had enough of waiting for the rip of a chainsaw to buzz around the corner from him. At least, that's all you can figure. He jumped ahead so long ago that you barely got one good hugpile session in a heap of Scalemate carnage before he peaced the fuck out.

And you could've used that so many times since, that it was fucking embarrassing.

You pretty much resigned yourself to the idea that you'd fucked up somewhere along the way. Getting used to people looking at you as if you had three heads came with the territory of being a mutant, but at least when Sollux did it, you knew it was just him being a smartass, pompous bulgelicker and that he didn't actually hold it against you. Kanaya would do that knowing little side-glancing grin, and you knew she'd have put it out of mind by the time you finished squawking. And strangely enough…Terezi was never phased by a thing you ever said. There was a weird, warm comfort in your gut when you realized that it seemed nigh impossible to scare her away.

So when you first caught that hurt, confused, borderline angry look from her as a powwow with dead players got too much for you to handle, you kept walking. That string had been fraying since you got here. Easier to just let it break and move the fuck on.

The problem was, you couldn't figure out where the fuck you went wrong. Where you managed to lose the only person who understood what made you tick without being slightly condescending like Kanaya or a cluckbeast of a feather like Sollux.

Because it had to be your fault. It always was.

 

* * *

 

Your name is Terezi Pyrope, and you officially have too much time on your hands.

This cabin fever-ridden joyride through the Furthest Ring has taken a toll on everyone, but not you. You have stuck it out. You have avoided saying either "bored" and "tired" like they were dirty words. You have found a way to use every spare moment that you weren't sleeping or hanging out with Dave and the Mayo(r).

But you have hit your limit.

Monuments should be erected in your honor for how you have handled things! Three years in proverbial prison would not phase a mighty legislacerator, and neither shall it phase you. It is okay that now, an estimated three or four days before arrival in the new session, you've finally resorted to sitting at your husktop, your chin resting in your palm, idly dragging around icons. Perhaps you'll try a few new particularly lurid color combinations between your window borders and your wallpaper. Bright yellow and fuschia purple always made a particularly lovely combination, like yellow confectionery and grape icing and little chocolate sprinkles of text, and even better, Sollux had told you once it made him want to vomit just looking at it. The most eye-bleeding combinations always seemed the tastiest. You're not sure if this was intentional or not. At least no one was ever looking over your shoulders.

You hadn't touched your husktop much since you alchemized one of them into your glasses. But you'd taken to not wearing those quite as often, now that you didn't especially have to worry about being marked for culling for your disability. It was also a little easier to read--taste--the text on a big screen than on the little lenses, delightfully cherry-red as they were. You click a function that synchronizes the chat history between the two, and you spend a couple hours laughing over your earliest FLARP logs with Nepeta (ignoring the little stab in your chest when the logs dropped off, no date more recent than about three sweeps ago).

You dutifully avoid your chat logs tagged with the initials AG. One day, you would muster up the gall, but where you are an admirably blossoming woman of the law, for now you will claim your age as an excuse. You are too young to deal with the ramifications of your first kill. One day, you will learn to execute judgment without pity. Or hate. Both things that should not come over the courtblock threshold with you.

Your first logs with Karkat are hilarious. He wasn't always as artful with words as he grew to be leading your teams into Sgrub, and you think that he sounds like an angry little id kicking and screaming and battling with himself inside his own head, more than any kind of master of insulting others. Did he always hate himself so much?

This trip has quite assuredly convinced you he did, and still does.

Sometimes you feel a little guilty. You had good reasons to be annoyed with him for a while, but sometimes you think you might have taken too much liberty with them. Some small part of you was relieved that things did not come to a head between two boys you were anxious to spend time with; one did the hard part for you and bowed out into his sad little poster-plastered corner and left you with no decision to make. If Karkat was going to be an antisocial douchebag, you were going to show him what a good time he was missing, and spend time with Dave in the process.

You and Dave had a conversation about human matesprits not one week into your trip. You were not thrilled with the idea. He was okay with that. He made some mention of age, and about scoping out all his options, and about frog breeding having taken a toll on his libido, whatever the fuck that meant. He said he wasn't sure either, but he'd read about it before and was too lazy (read: cool) to look it up. In context, you're pretty sure you got it.

Besides, three years on a shitty piece of rock is a long time to have to deal with quadrant-flipping if things went wrong, he said. Or something close to it, anyway.

You come upon the last pesterlog between you and Karkat before the rift.

You never got that last message.

You can't believe you're blushing. 

**Author's Note:**

> TO BE CONTINUED


End file.
